


aelwyn abernant's kiss list

by scrxbble



Category: Dimension 20 (Web Series)
Genre: F/F, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Sex, My First AO3 Post, aelwyn has trauma and teens are dumb about it, destructive behavior as coping, fantasy high live spoilers, for like a moment but just to be safe, ft josie's long ass sentences, give me more seven maidens content, shameless mordred manor content, the bad kids and the seven maidens are friends okay, there's a lot of name drops but very few of them are properly included so
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-28
Updated: 2020-04-28
Packaged: 2021-03-01 20:15:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,552
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23892919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scrxbble/pseuds/scrxbble
Summary: aelwyn abernant keeps a list of people she's kissed, more or less.
Relationships: Adaine Abernant & Aelwen Abernant, Aelwen Abernant/Sam Nightingale
Comments: 35
Kudos: 123





	aelwyn abernant's kiss list

**Author's Note:**

> this starts as a list and ends in 4,000 words of aelwyn/sam content so if you want to skip there you can, frankly. please please ask me to tag things if i need to! more writing and d20 content at aelwynrights.tumblr.com

a mostly-complete list of people aelwyn abernant has kissed:

**\- anthain teldriel**

aelwyn was fourteen and visiting fallinel for some diplomat’s event. she was happy to be paraded around, happy to have her hudol acceptance bragged about - a perfect score, her father said, part smug, part what-did-you-expect-she’s-an-abernant - happy to oblige when arianwen suggested that she take a walk with anthain teldriel, a year older and perfect-elven-blond, the son of some advisor that her parents liked. she followed orders and they spent fifteen minutes in the hedge maze before he whispered something that made aelwyn feel like she couldn’t breathe, turned her chin up to face his. it was sloppy, and quick, and rough. aelwyn’s perfect face did not change even after he called her frigid, and bitchy, and a tease, and they came back to the adults with only praises for the beautiful landscaping, because perfect ambassadors daughters do not make a fuss when perfect diplomats’ sons trap them against hedge maze walls.

**\- alekos, who has a last name that aelwyn never bothered to find out**

at sixteen, aelwyn knew that the only reason she was invited to these things was that her parents had good alcohol in their cabinet that they never drank. there were rarely guests in the abernant home that warranted a bottle of their good elven wine, so it was easy for aelwyn to summon a bottle to bring to the parties that mallory and aurelia and kellendriel threw. she had drank about half of it herself, standing in the corner, a raised eyebrow and pursed lips scaring off the few people who didn't already recognize her and her icy stare. the party had turned into the girls in tiny circles giggling drunk and tipsy hudol boys summoning sparks to impress them when a boy she didn’t recognize, aguefort red and white emblazoned on his chest, approached her, his words slurred. when she spoke, she was surprised to find her own were too. there was a moment of hesitation, a moment where aelwyn looked at the girls her age gossiping together and the music hit her chest and the cup in her hand felt so heavy, and aelwyn was so tired of being perfect and so tired of being accomplished and so tired of being bored. she could hear the whispers turn in her direction as she kissed him, but she never could muster enough emotion to care about the things people said about her. 

the next party that kellendriel threw, aelwyn was not invited to. it was the week after that that percival, in quiet voice right before divination, asked if aelwyn knew where he could find a source for his own parties, and aelwyn’s raised eyebrow and pursed lips didn’t scare him off either, somehow. she is not bored the next weekend.

(aelwyn knew that this list was incomplete - that somewhere in there were boys whose names she never bothered to name or tried too hard to forget. she started to claim the spotlight at hudol parties, drinking whatever was offered, watching her cheerleaders flirt and giggle and make the hellions feel like more than the worms they were. she was as cold as ever, rebuffing advances from freshmen who had never drank before and only flirting enough to keep them asking her back. still, there was always someone who thought they could break down her walls, and she let them believe they had for the night. she took a twisted relish in the numbness the next morning.

it was at one of these parties that aelwyn met a sorceress on the arm of a blonde giant, and though her clothes were pink and her eyeshadow sparkled in the dim light, aelwyn knew that this girl’s mind was as steely as her own, and when penelope whispered something about a dragon and a conspiracy to aelwyn, she didn’t wait to say yes. these parties were getting boring again.)

**\- penelope everpetal**

it was a dare, something for the aguefort boys to watch and cheer for. penelope had only lifted an eyebrow before turning to aelwyn, dark lipstick spreading in a challenging smirk. no one noticed aelwyn’s hands shaking around her cup of wine as she leaned in, that practiced bored expression on her face. dayne hooted. penelope’s lips were warm and soft and it was nice to not kiss someone who had to shave. aelwyn spent the rest of the night with plum-red lipstick messy against her own pale pink and shivered every time penelope’s hand touched hers.

**\- benny silvertree**

he was cute, for a hudol boy, and if his arcane skill wasn’t up to snuff, well, she was too drunk off dwarven vodka to care. penelope had yelled at her earlier, told her that the only way they would win was if there was no suspicion, and she had a part to play. aelwyn wanted to ask why her part felt like guilt and lying and oh god i sank a ship, but her face had spent so long revealing nothing that her mouth did the same. instead, she dolled herself up and summoned a bottle from her parent’s cabinet to take too many shots in a bloodrush player’s basement. penelope’s approving smile almost made her nauseous. she spent an hour in a bedroom pretending to care, pretending to like it, pretending pretending pretending.

(it was somewhere in here that she stopped rebuffing, started hunting for someone to take the edge off, because the alcohol and the dragon spice weren’t working as well as they used to. she didn’t wait for them to approach her anymore. penelope would frown when she was there, but had stopped saying anything about it, just watched aelwyn down drinks and do dragon spice and disappear up unfamiliar staircases.)

**\- fabian seacaster**

penelope’s visit earlier hadn’t been just checking in. kalvaxus wanted - needed - another girl, and ostentatia’s house was being used for a hudol party, and there’s no way anyone’s slept with her, penelope laughed. just get in and get her and get out, but don’t raise any suspicion, she’d said.

not raising suspicion meant hitting percival across the face with a bottle, sucking the liquor down in one gulp, and throwing an insult at some fucking goblin nearby. not raising suspicions meant she took a glance at the white-haired boy nearby and didn’t think twice before she grabbed him to her, ignoring the gasps from what must be his friends nearby. he smelled of exhaust and thick cologne. she didn’t want to think about what he smelled like. not raising suspicion meant dragon spice off this half-elf’s chest and bullshit rules and acting like she had never even thought about palimpsests and prom queens and Penelope. not raising suspicion meant that when adaine’s friends recognized her, she gave them her patented ice queen stare and pushed deeper, ignoring camera flashes going off and the warning coming from inside herself, that this was too far. she steeled herself and flirted with adaine’s half-elf friend some more and summoned more liquor when it was getting low. for the first time in a while, though, when she ran upstairs, she was alone, and the bedroom she was in was not thick with the scent of sweat and liquor. instead, there was a dwarven girl who tried to scream. there was a crystal in her hands. there was her sister at the door, eyes ablaze. adaine charged, filthy swears dropping from her lips. aelwyn wasn’t bored anymore.

**\- fabian seacaster (again)**

it was another year before she saw him again, and more than that before they had a conversation that wasn’t fraught with fear and distrust and there wasn’t exactly time for talking in the forest of the nightmare king. she slipped into her old self again when she talked to him, and she hated it. they had both changed since a year ago - he was fighting with a fucking sheet now, for one thing - and that was solidified when they kissed in the kitchen of mordred manor when sandra lynn was out on adventure and jawbone was all too happy to loudly go to bed at eight pm and ignore the sounds of the rest of the bad kids and the seven maidens showing up. fabian was tipsy on a concoction fig was mixing from behind a bookshelf turned on its side to serve as a bar. aelwyn had been trading her drinks for water all night, partly because she didn’t trust fig’s bartender skills and mostly because the thought of drinking made her nauseous. they had ended up in the kitchen at the same time, aelwyn looking for more chips or pretzels or something to satiate the hungry sophomores in the living room and fabian forcing himself to get a drink of water after riz had beat him arm-wrestling. they hadn’t ever been alone before, and it seemed only right when fabian spilled water on himself for aelwyn to find a towel to help him dab it off. it seemed only right for her to tease him about not being able to hold his liquor, she thought he was a pirate, aren’t they supposed to be rulebreakers? it seemed only right for him to step closer to her and tell her that he breaks rules all the time, fake bravado helped by fig juice. it seemed only right for her to close the gap, stand on tiptoe because he’s gotten taller, try to dissolve herself into it, step back when neither of them lean closer. fabian said something half-joking, maybe they’ll do better next time. aelwyn smiled and said something back, maybe neither of them want to be on the receiving end of adaine’s fist. she left fabian refilling his glass and dropped off a bag of pretzels for the near-empty bowl, then went upstairs and shut her door and tried to figure out how to be in her own body without someone else praising it, how to be in her own mind without her parents or kalvaxus or kalina putting thoughts into it, how to exist without the words of others as her crutches. she decided that maybe it was best if she didn’t kiss fabian again, and maybe it was best if she didn’t kiss anyone for a while, and maybe it was best if she went back downstairs and pretended everything was okay. she was good at that, at least.

**\- sam nightingale**

sam does not like aelwyn at all. none of the seven maidens really do, at first. ostentatia’s parties come with extra invitations for ayda and tracker and zelda is already invited, obviously, but there is no room for aelwyn abernant on the list, sorry, stop asking. it’s understandable, and aelwyn doesn’t want to go back to a house where she got her ass kicked anyways. it’s harder to avoid them when the house party is happening in the house she lives in. fig doesn’t realize, or doesn’t care, that there’s tension when she invites the maidens over for game night or impromptu concerts or jawbone-bought-us-alcohol-we’re-tearing-this-place-to-the-ground ragers. the seven maidens never refuse an invitation and adaine likes dragging aelwyn downstairs to sit through pictionary or another bass solo or kristen’s sloppy drunk dancing, but aelwyn knows that of the people in the room, the ones who can stand her number few.

they come around warily, with what is probably a plea from her baby sister that aelwyn isn’t going to trap anyone in crystals, she’s going to therapy, the worst thing she’s done recently is snapped at me for keeping her up all night with my studying. slowly, penny starts including aelwyn in the conversation, giving her conspiratorial glances when riz starts to spiral. slowly, katya claps her on the shoulder after a particularly good round of charades. slowly, slowly, slowly, danielle lets aelwyn feed her fox bits of hamburger from krom’s, antiope corrects her form the day jawbone lets them take bows out back and shoot at the treeline, zelda offers up a blushing smile when aelwyn compliments gorgug’s drum skills. the wariness doesn’t fade, but the coldness does.

sam nightingale takes a long time to unfreeze. the first time she thaws, it is summer, and fabian is having a party in his ship-turned-mansion’s backyard. late afternoon light spills over a clay patio, tables set up with food and sodas and wine that hallariel pretends to ignore her son’s friends drinking. aelwyn is here, because adaine is here, and because sitting alone in the manor sounded like something that would end with aelwyn bored enough to come anyways, so she sits next to a stack of barrels inexplicably set up in the corner of the patio and watches the crowd. her heart pangs at the sight of adaine, attached at the hip to riz or fig or kristen or all five of her party, the six of them cracking inside jokes and elbowing each other jovially, shouting nonsense about seafood or one-upping each other’s best scars (fabian takes off his eyepatch, riz has an impressive one on his neck from that pit fiend, gorgug is nearly cross-hatched with them, adaine and kristen have matching ones right above the heart. fig is so despondent about her lack of cool scars that she tries to give herself one above the hip. there is a five-person tackle to stop her). she doesn’t think she looks wistful until sam sits down next to her, hair bouncing and legs folded, saying, “they’re a good party.”

“hm?” aelwyn asks, rearranging her emotions on her face, though sam has already seen the glimpse of them.

“your sister and her friends. they’re a good party, they look out for each other.” sam is watching her own party now, bouncing around the party to different groups, but somehow sharing glances around the crowds to each other that say more than words could, a quick thumbs up to check in or a raised eyebrow angled at someone doing something stupid.

“so are you guys,” aelwyn offers, though she doesn’t know if this is a compliment-trading situation. she tries again. “i mean, you and the other - maidens.”

her pause is barely noticable, but her voice catches as she remembers what their name signifies, the fucking hell they went through last year, the ordeal she put them through. sam doesn’t notice, or ignores it.

“did you have a party? at hudol?” she asks instead of thanks, her fingers - they are slightly webbed, adaine realizes, thin flaps of skin between each finger - her fingers toying with the edge of a crystal case.

aelwyn focuses on that movement as she answers. “we don’t do adventuring parties at hudol. it’s a bit more cutthroat than your summer camp academy.”

sam glances at her, eyes unreadable. “it’s a bit more than summer camp, you know. lots of danger at that school.”

aelwyn bites the inside of her mouth - she has picked up a new habit to replace her old vices, and her mother isn’t around to tell her it’s unbecoming anymore. “i am sorry for my part in that,” she says finally, staring at a crack in the clay stones. “i never thought about the- the people it would affect.”

sam shakes her head a little bit, enough to set her hair off floating around her. “i wasn’t around for your part of it, mostly, but thank you.” there is a pause where aelwyn tries to figure out why sam nightingale is sitting next to her, in fabian seacaster’s backyard, with adaine’s friends around her, and then the whole situation becomes too much to think about and aelwyn just stays silent until sam disappears back into her circle of friends, who greet her with gentle touches and smiles that make aelwyn ache.

sam finds her again the next time they are at a party - danielle’s birthday, which involves magic-vine archways and a beautiful new spellbook from the barkstocks. aelwyn is not quite alone, because she and adaine are trying to one-up each other in pulling things off the food table without their mage hand being sensed. it gets too giggly when adaine pulls a slice of cake right out of gorgug’s hand, and aelwyn drops a bowl of pretzels from laughing too hard. adaine disappears after that, though, because kristen is somewhere moping over tracker and fig has sent a series of all-caps texts that make adaine hurry towards the barkstock’s bathroom. aelwyn doesn’t know what to do with herself, exactly, and she is almost grateful when sam appears.

“do you hang out with people other than your sister?” she asks instead of saying hello.

aelwyn shrugs. “i’m not exactly well-liked by a lot of people here,” she says as an answer, and they both know that it means no.

sam considers it, grabs a slice of cake, shoves aelwyn towards a wicker couch. “that’s fair,” sam says once they’re sat down, and aelwyn somehow has a piece of cake in her hands too. “i wouldn’t like you if you were involved in a conspiracy that screwed half the town and ruined prom either.”

aelwyn doesn’t touch the plastic fork on her plate, because she feels sick all of a sudden. “then what are you doing here?” she asks, tucking a foot up underneath her, setting the plate down so sam doesn’t see her hands tremble.

sam pauses with the fork in her mouth, white plastic stained green with cheap icing, and considers aelwyn for a moment, dark green eyes pulling at her like an undercurrent. “i mean, you knew my old best friend. i’ll forgive a lot of stuff, apparently.”

aelwyn watches the genasi next to her take another bite of cake and remembers exactly who her old best friend was in snapshots - perfect curls, hand on dayne’s bicep, dark lipstick only slightly smeared as she pulls away from aelwyn’s face. “i’m sorry penelope did that to you,” she says finally, hoping that sam can tell what else is loaded into her words - i’m sorry i helped. i’m sorry i’m here and she’s not.

sam pales for only a second at the name, and aelwyn realizes that she is not the only one who has had practice keeping a straight face. her voice doesn’t waver when she says, “she’s gone now. and she sucked. and i have a new party, anyways.”

aelwyn glances at the members of that party scattered around the yard - zelda next to danielle as she opens presents, katya and antiope talking to two sword-strapped boys nearby, penny and ostentatia deep in conversation through a window in the kitchen. the seven maidens are still keeping each other involved, sending glances and covert smiles and aelwyn is sure she can feel a message spell or two pass by, but sam is not with her fellow maidens.

“why aren’t you hanging out with them, then?” she asks, not to be mean or make sam leave, but truly trying to figure out why aelwyn has become her conversation partner of choice.

sam shrugs. her hair lifts with her shoulders and floats gently back down. “you remind me of her a lot.”

“fantastic,” aelwyn murmurs.

“not in a bad way,” the other girl adds.

aelwyn doesn’t know what a good way to remind a girl of her best friend-turned-psychopath is, exactly, but she takes a bite of cake, and sam stays until antiope bounds over with one of the boys, some sort of monk who is all too happy to be introduced to another beautiful girl, and aelwyn ducks out before the conversation can include her. she doesn’t feel quite up to pretending, tonight.

the next time zelda crashes movie night, sam tags along, which is not unusual, because any of the seven maidens are likely to be zelda’s plus one or plus two or plus four. it is unusual when sam offers aelwyn the other half of the blanket she’s claimed, when she leans into aelwyn to laugh, when she throws a piece of popcorn at aelwyn’s hair when the blonde makes a shitty joke that normally only adaine would listen to. it’s strange, in a way, but it reminds aelwyn of watching fig and kristen and adaine joke around whenever mordred manor is overtaken by girl’s night, and aelwyn can’t help but smile and throw a celery stick right back.

sandra lynn is furious when she sees what used to be the living room under a layer of thrown popcorn and crudites and, regrettably, a container of hummus that riz had launched from some hiding place to splatter all over the mantel, but aelwyn manages to disappear before being roped into clean-up duties, taking sam with her as she darts through a passageway behind a bookshelf and ends up in her and adaine’s room, breathless.

“that got out of hand,” aelwyn breathes, flopping onto the bottom bunk.

sam is still giggling, half bent over, but she manages to squeeze out, “i feel bad that we’re not helping them down there.”

aelwyn waves a hand. “adaine has mending and riz deserves to scrape that hummus off the wall.”

sam giggles again, something like water through a stream, and sits with aelwyn on her bed, leaning back to stare up at the slats of adaine’s bed above them. “you did start it, so you should at least help,” she points out, turning to grin at aelwyn, who sits up indignantly.

“oh, as if i threw the first piece of popcorn? let he who is without sin take the first cob!”

“it’s your fault for making that joke!”

“it’s your fault for listening! everyone else ignores me,” aelwyn exclaims, and only when sam falls silent does she realize what she’s said. she backtracks spectacularly, “not on purpose, i mean, they’re just all best friends or dating or both so it’s not like i really contribute to the conversation much when i do talk, it’s just something that happens.”

sam is still silent, and then, “you never seemed quiet before.”

“i wasn’t,” aelwyn admits. “i was usually showing off.”

sam smiles, barely. “maybe there’s a balance between center of attention and wallflower?” she suggests, and her tone is light in a way that aelwyn only ever hears from adaine.

“we’ll see,” aelwyn says, and then there’s a knock on the door, and sandra lynn has noticed their absence and isn’t going to let them get away with it. they share a vacuum handle and pretend that they’re helping.

it becomes more natural as the days get hotter, sam and aelwyn at each other’s sides, first at parties, then one day at the mall, then suddenly a lot of places all at once, it seems. sam is still with the seven maidens half the time and on the group text when she’s not, and aelwyn spends a lot of time trying to get into the bad kid’s good graces (to his credit, fabian becomes a lot more friendly after the kitchen kiss is not brought up by either of them). when they aren’t otherwise busy, though, sam arrives at mordred manor unannounced, dragging aelwyn to elm valley mall for pretzels or to the nightingale house for a movie night or to the pool. aelwyn stops protesting after the first few times, and begins texting sam herself after the next few, offering up mordred manor for the next movie night or suggesting they crash the bad kid’s sleepover (they only plan to stay for a little bit, but once they’re there and zelda shows up, it’s only a matter of time before the couches are covered in sleeping bodies and jawbone wakes them all up with waffles the next day).

she has to ask adaine a few times what friends do, and she lets adaine smile at her clueless older sister and suggest a picnic once the weather’s nice or a girl’s night in. sam seems to already know exactly what friends do, and especially what best friends do. they share clothes and makeup before parties, and sit with their feet dangling in the creek behind sam’s house gossiping. the other seven maidens warm up faster with sam’s seal of approval, and she can’t quite keep up with all their inside jokes, but when official party business isn’t calling, aelwyn is in someone’s backseat on the way to krom’s diner and even ostentatia doesn’t mind when aelwyn steals a few fries off her plate. parties aren’t boring anymore, not with six bad kids and seven maidens to keep her entertained. her days aren’t empty anymore, not with adaine waking her up early to show off a spell she learned and sam texting her late into the night with gossip - never about party members, outright, but there’s a lot of guessing games and names-that-rhyme-with. aelwyn doesn’t have anyone to tell, anyways, and sam is thankful that she has another outlet for complaints about party bullshit.

“i mean, you’d think he’d get the message, but he’s fucking flirting with katya now, too!” sam exclaims one day as they watch her little sister lift bubbles of water out of the creek, glancing at the older girls for approval every so often. aelwyn nods encouragingly as allison grins, one tooth missing from a pearly smile, and shrugs a response at sam.

“sounds like a horny teenage boy, nightingale. don’t know how much there is to fix there.”

“zelda still thinks gorgug’s going to punch him for that drama, but i think if he keeps trying to come on to katya he’s going to get more than punched.”

aelwyn laughs and summons her own orb of water to match allison’s. “she’d definitely teach him a lesson, all right.”

sam’s eyes glint. “maybe our junior year project is just putting skrank in his fucking place.”

“language!” aelwyn admonishes. a flick of her hand in allison’s direction bursts her orb into droplets that rain down on the water, hitting their legs in a cooling mist. “baby nightingale looks up to you.”

“baby nightingale is a terror when you’re not around,” sam counters, “but she likes you so she’s nice now.”

“i’m likeable,” aelwyn brags, her smile wide and real, and she can’t believe she’s allowed to say these things out loud. “people love me.”

“don’t get a big head, abernant,” sam teases, hitting her shoulder into aelwyn’s, “and remember, i have to love you.”

aelwyn’s heart seizes. “you have to?”

sam looks at her like she’s crazy and stands, offering her hands to pull aelwyn up. “of course i have to, you’re my best friend. i’d be a shit best friend if i didn’t love you.”

“right,” aelwyn manages, and it is good that sam turns away to call allison back into the house with them for lunch, because aelwyn can hardly breathe through how much she is loved.

it is two weeks before they hang out again, because the seven maidens are suddenly swamped with a chimera from the mountains of chaos, a project that antiope’s sister has called them in to work on. it’s a week’s trip there, a week back, with no cell service and only the occasional call from zelda’s satellite-boosted phone when gorgug happens to be around that aelwyn is able to see sam briefly, in the background of a shot of all seven maidens waving from around a campfire.

“danielle and antiope like going the old fashioned way if we have time,” sam explains before they leave, an adventurer’s pack strapped to her back and her hair braided, an uncommon sight. “no one’s really in danger with this chimera, corsica just wants us to get the experience since we’ve been fucking around all summer.”

aelwyn manages a smile. “be safe, okay?” she tells sam, hands floating up to untwist the strap of her best friend’s tank top before fluttering back down to her sides. she doesn’t know why she’s so nervous, they’d gone on adventures before, for heaven’s sake, no one ever died-

still, aelwyn hovers near gorgug whenever he is at the manor, and when a call comes through, before gorgug slips outside and zelda steps outside of her nosy friend’s earshot, aelwyn is relieved to see sam’s hand wave or hear her watery laugh in the background. she ignores the tightening in her chest every time she thinks about her best friend and figures it’s normal.

two weeks pass faster than she thinks, too. adaine ropes her into the research the ace detectives are doing. fig enlists her in teaching fabian how to braid hair, the two of them wrestling gorgug down to practice and showing off the finished product to ayda, who pronounces it fantastic. kristen and sandra lynn are planning a surprise party for jawbone’s birthday next week, and which streamers do you think he wants, and all too soon, there is a familiar car door slamming outside and aelwyn’s phone buzzes with the beeping sound she only has on for one person.

sam nightingale has barely taken two steps down the path before a body fills the space in front of her, tripping into her arms. aelwyn abernant is too ecstatic to worry about losing that teleportation spell slot because sam is here, and alive, and only winces a little when aelwyn squeezes her tightly around the waist.

“are you hurt?” aelwyn exclaims instantly. she pulls away but leaves her hands where they are, gentle on sam’s hips as the genasi shakes her head.

“just a little scratch, i promise. did you miss me?”

“like hell,” aelwyn admits, and hugs sam again. sam’s arms come up around aelwyn’s shoulders tightly, squeezing until they are both about to lose balance.

“easy, abernant, i won’t disappear,” sam tells her, pulling away again, and she keeps her arms where they are too, lazily draped over aelwyn’s shoulders. they could slow dance if they wanted to, aelwyn thinks.

she doesn’t say that out loud. “just don’t go off adventuring again soon, okay?” she says instead, half joking. she knows sam will leave again, it’s what adventurers do, but she thinks it might’ve killed her if sam had been gone for a few days more.

sam’s smile grows. her fingers, still wrapped in aelwyn’s hair, tug at the blonde strands loosely. “don’t worry, we have an agreement to not go off again until school starts. ostentatia’s dad worries enough as it is.”

“you’ll have to tell me everything about it,” aelwyn says. she realizes that she has not moved, that they are still wrapped in each other in the front yard. sam seems to realize too, and her fingers still.

“sorry,” sam murmurs, detangling herself and stepping back.

“no,” aelwyn replies, letting her hands drop back down to her sides.

“want to get a milkshake and i’ll fill you in?”

“desperately.”

sam does not move her car when they get in. she puts the keys in the engine, turns the elemental on, plugs in her crystal, puts on a song aelwyn has heard her sing along to on the highway more times than she can count, but she doesn’t turn out of the driveway.

instead, she glances at aelwyn, eyes sea-glass green in the afternoon light, and aelwyn can still not read what lies beneath those waves.

“milkshakes?” aelwyn prompts. her hands seem too big for herself, and she pulls down the sun visor to mess with her hair, smoothes out her skirt, tucks them beneath her legs finally.

sam puts her hands on the wheel. “i missed you a lot,” she says to the windshield.

aelwyn’s heart seizes again. “i missed you too, nightingale.”

sam takes her hands off the wheel. her eyes meet aelwyn’s again, and aelwyn feels like she cannot breathe. there is something behind those waves of bottleglass that aelwyn recognizes.

it is the look that gorgug gets when zelda calls him. it is what flashes across fig’s face when she sings about ayda. it is what jawbone’s hugs say to adaine. it is the flint behind the spark of determination in riz’s eyes when he’s on a case. it is soft, and it is scary, and it is something devotional and delicate.

aelwyn leans over the center console. sam meets her halfway, her fingers returning to aelwyn’s hair. there is a moment where they hesitate, eyes meeting, an eyebrow raise and a smile, and then their lips touch and aelwyn thinks she is freefalling. sam is that fresh water scent and a dewy cheek beneath aelwyn’s palm, and she can taste mint chapstick as she breathes into the kiss.

it is no longer something performative, something to prove. there is nothing in the world but the two of them and the front seat.

aelwyn pulls away first. she isn’t sure what to say. she settles on, “i got lipstick on you.”

sam laughs and smudges it against her mouth with her thumb. “i don’t mind.”

she pulls out of the driveway with one hand, the other reaching over to grab aelwyn’s as they drive. there are things that they should talk about, aelwyn knows, and things she has to decide within herself, but those things can wait until after milkshakes, she thinks. for the moment, she touches her thumb to the back of sam’s palm and tastes sam’s chapstick on her lips and listens to sam hum along to a song that she has heard a thousand times. aelwyn wants to hear it a thousand more.


End file.
